Revamp Ja’s healthcare system, says Golding
Published:Tuesday | October 31, 2023 | 12:07 AMChristopher Thomas/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
OPPOSITION LEADER and People’s National Party (PNP) President Mark Golding has issued a call for Jamaica’s healthcare system to receive a complete overhaul in order to tackle recurring issues such as limited bed spaces in hospitals and reports of unpleasant customer service by hospital staff.
Golding made the appeal while speaking to journalists following a meeting at the Montego Bay High School in St James on Sunday, where the PNP presented its candidates in the parish for the upcoming general and local government elections.
“The healthcare system is in a dire situation because where the consumers of health services, the patients, meet at the hospitals, the services and the way they are treated are unacceptable,” said Golding. “There are tremendous problems in terms of waiting times, how people have to be sleeping on benches or floors, and they have to be in chairs for prolonged periods of time waiting for beds, because there is nothing to accommodate them.
“The whole situation is highly unsatisfactory, and there needs to be much greater emphasis on ensuring that the people’s experience in the healthcare system is a positive experience, rather than one which is extremely demeaning and unpleasant, and where people literally die without being properly treated because of the long periods of time that they have to wait before they can get care,” Golding added.
His comments follow reports earlier this month that patients at the Savanna-la-Mar Public General Hospital in Westmoreland have been complaining about the lack of bed spaces. The administrators of the Type B hospital have had to be using beach chairs to accommodate patients in the Accident and Emergency Ward.
Golding also criticised the length of time it has taken for the ongoing restoration work at the Cornwall Regional Hospital (CRH) in St James to get closer to completion since work began there in 2017, as well as the perpetual increase of the repair work’s cost, from an initial $2 billion in March 2018 to $14.5 billion at present.
ABSOLUTE DISGRACE
“It is an absolute disgrace that that renovation of the only Type A hospital in western Jamaica has been going on now for years and years and years, and the cost just keeps mounting and there is no end in sight. It is absolutely deplorable, and we would have to put a serious team in place to make sure it is finished as quickly as possible, if it is not finished by the time we assume government,” said Golding.
“We are going to have to investigate carefully how that money has been spent as well ... we would have to investigate to make sure there was proper value for money for all those billions and billions of additional dollars that have been spent at the CRH over and beyond the original projections,” Golding declared.
Other problems which Jamaica’s health sector has had to endure include the departure of nurses from the country’s public health system over the years, as a report from Auditor General Pamela Monroe Ellis in March revealed that 1,514 nurses resigned between 2019 and 2021.
Last month, Health Minister Dr Christopher Tufton told the Pan American Health Organization’s 60th directing council in Washington, DC that Jamaica is focusing on primary healthcare reform amid upgrades of the island’s health services.